


A Strange Mantle

by Ishti



Category: Aveyond
Genre: After Rhen's Quest, Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:39:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishti/pseuds/Ishti
Summary: Our pasts never vanish, nor do our futures.





	A Strange Mantle

“Keep your eyes  _ open, _ boy! How many times must I tell you that you’re not to sleep until this job is done?”

The young man rubbed fiercely at his eyes until white stars bloomed before them, obscuring the wrinkled face of his father in the darkness of the unlit apartment. He blinked, sniffed, and shifted his weight from the wall to his feet. “What ‘job’ could we possibly have at midnight?”

“The one that’s made our family rich since your great-grandpa’s time. Now that I’m retiring, you'd better learn.” The old man began down the stairs from their apartment to the family storefront, rolling his feet as not to wake his wife or the youngest of his children. His footsteps were fortuitously muffled under a low roll of thunder. “And keep whispering ‘til the door shuts, damn you.”

“Or what?”

“Uchh. Maybe your mother was right, and my petulant teenage son is still too young to run the shop himself.”

“Mama said that?” The boy frowned.

“Are you going to listen?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Then get down here.”

The barber held the door open and gestured through it, and his son entered the shop below, heralded only by the drumming of rain.

“What kind of oddball wants his hair cut at midnight? In a  _ thunderstorm?” _ muttered the boy once the door shut behind them. “He must keep long hours at work.”

“We don’t ask questions. He pays ten times our rate.”

_ “Ten _ times?!”

“Why do you think our shop is the classiest in town? Why do you think we have these newfangled adjustable chairs with the foot pumps, and no one else in Veldarah even knows what they are? Ten times the standard rate twice per month, boy! Do  _ not _ lose this client for us.”

“Have a little faith in me,” the boy grumbled. “I’ve been doing this since I was, what, twelve?”

“Ah, yes; I remember when I had five years of experience and a lifetime’s worth of arrogance inflating my belt size.”

“Whatever.” The boy sighed and kicked an unswept lock of hair further under a vanity. “Why is this haircut so important to him, anyway? If I worked this late, I’d just cut it myself at home.”

The man conceded with a grunt. “Something about an old wedding tradition from his homeland. Married men keep their hair short. He never wanted to discuss it, but he wanted it done professionally.”

“Fine.” The boy furrowed his brow as he watched his father hang sheets from the vanity mirrors like old furniture in a mourner’s mansion. “But… hang on; if Grandpa was cutting the client’s hair since Great-Gramps retired, wouldn’t that mean this guy would have to be at least--”

“Shush.” The old barber glanced at the polished clock over the front door. “Eleven fifty-eight. He’ll be here in one minute; he likes to be a minute early, exactly. Remember that. We’re giving him a number-three with 6A bangs and double-Y burns. Clean and tight. Don’t talk to him unless he asks a question.”

The boy gulped. “W--why not?”

“Oh, reins down; he just doesn’t like to talk. One more thing: remember the extra-large cape in the back, the one we never use?” The man’s lip twitched, barely visible in the darkness. “That’s for him.”

Before the boy could ask another question, there was a rap at the door.

“Here he is. Follow my lead this time. In two weeks, you’ll be cutting his hair until  _ you’re _ fifty with a meddlesome son.”

Swiftly, the barber pulled back the curtains on an eastern-facing window before tossing his son a matchbook. The boy fumbled with it in surprise before his shaking hands found their bearing and lit the lamps on either side of his father’s special vanity. He heard the front bells tinkle quietly before the muted  _ thunk  _ and  _ squish _ of a damp and heavily-armored foot meeting the waxed wood floor.

“Good evening, barber.”

“Good evening. Your seat is prepared.”

“Who is this?”

The boy swallowed. He could barely bring himself to turn around, face the knight, and offer a weak smile which was not returned.

“This is my son. He’ll be running the business beginning next week, and he’ll be cutting your hair from now on.”

The knight nodded. “Very well.”

He seemed enormous in his foreign armor, which sparkled eerily in the lamplight. The boy couldn’t take his eyes from the knight’s--the palest blue he’d ever seen. That soaked, hooded cloak he wore would have to be removed before the dressing cape could drape over his  _ impractically _ enormous pauldrons, and the seat would need to be adjusted as low as it could go. The boy set to work, seeking out signs of impatience or irritation in the knight’s demeanor but finding only unmarked stone. He did his best to ignore the opaque white sheet hanging where their faces ought to be reflected.

He snipped and shaved. He measured the sideburns with his wrist-tape. Golden-blond hair caught orange-red candlelight as it drifted to the floor. It wasn’t a special cut at all--hardly worth the shop’s standard fee, and certainly not ten times that. The boy kept his mouth shut.

When his job was complete, the boy dusted his client off with a towel. Reflexively, he gestured at the covered mirror and began to ask, “Would you like to s-- _ oof!” _

The old barber crossed his arms and glared at his son, whose backside would sport a considerable bruise the next morning.

“Uh--uh, it looks--it suits you, sir,” stammered the boy. He quickly removed the dressing cape.

“Your words are kind.”

“We always appreciate your business, my lord,” said the barber, dipping his head.

The knight nodded, almost to himself, as the boy reattached his cloak. “And I appreciate your devotion to accommodation. I have my usual payment, and I wish to include a gift in honor of your hard-earned retirement.”

A bulging purse found the old barber’s palm, and he beamed like the moon. “You have my unending thanks.”

“I shall return in a fortnight.” The knight’s eyes were distant as he opened the front door, shielding the floor from the rain with his body. Sudden lightning illuminated his silvery armor, nearly blinding the barber’s son. He turned his face away just as a tremendous crack of thunder bellowed through the air, so powerful that the furniture trembled and the lamps flickered. The sheet slipped from the mirror by the eastern window, reflecting the front of the shop, the vanities, the front door.

The faintest, ghostliest outline of a knight in armor, transparent as glass, his neat hair cropped close to his gossamer skull.


End file.
